"Shock & awe" was a lie. "Taking Baghdad" was a lie. "The Surge" was a lie. "Winning" was a lie.

[kpete]

"Shock and awe" was a lie. "Taking Baghdad was a lie. The army of Iraq just went away. The "surge," each and every one of them, was a lie. "Winning" was a lie, every single time the word was used. Every. Single. Time. The Afghan army was a lie. It didn't even bother surrendering to the Taliban. It just went … poof. The Afghan "government" was a lie. It too went poof. The Iraqi government is a lie. Everything we have done to win the war on terror for two decades, 20 long years, has been a lie.

.................

The biggest Big Lie of them all was that it had meaning, that we accomplished something, that we somehow won the war on terror. Terror hasn't gone away. Hell, we're growing it ourselves now, right here at home.

I'll tell you another war we lost, maybe even a bigger and more important war than the war on terror. We lost the war on truth.

.............

The lies that followed 9/11 have torn us apart as a nation and put our democracy in peril. That's our legacy: Lies are now considered by an entire political party to be legitimate political currency. A man who has told so many lies we have lost count of them is now a legitimate political figure supported for the highest office of the land by one of our two political parties.

MORE GOOD STUFF:
https://www.salon.com/2021/09/11/911-and-the-birth-of-the-big-lie/

[malaise]

1. No the biggest lie was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction

That illegal invasion and occupation slaughtered way more than 500,000 Iraqis.
That was a crime against humanity and it is disgraceful to see that war criminal being celebrated this morning.

Enough with all the lies

[AllaN01Bear]

2. dont forget rr with " we have to punish iran, always punish iran.

[voteearlyvoteoften]

3. MOAB

I remember watching the media gleefully announce the dropping of the Mother of All Bombs. Sickening!

“War is not healthy fir children and other living things”

[Hortensis]

4. The war on truth is won and lost person by person,

and there are over 250 million adults in this nation. Not all took in what you're characterizing as 20 years of lies.

Colonel Jessup was onto something when he said about people in general, "You want the truth?! You can't handle the truth!" It's way too complex and way too much trouble to find in the confusion most people. The work of understanding turns most people off, just not interested enough. Happens to me often on many/most topics.

That leaves vacuums of ignorance to be filled by people whose job it is. Some make good faith efforts to inform and others are professional deceivers. And as we know, a fraction of the truth can make a great lie -- especially as truths are spun and reinterpreted into deceits, which are reinforced over, and over, and over by clever scoundrels.

Shouldn't we know by now that there are ALWAYS scoundrels busily reinterpreting truth as lies for all who let them? And that it's our job to find good faith actors?

Realizing they exist is a critical learning experience in itself.

[TheRealNorth]

5. And some people are not interested in obtaining the truth....

But in only obtaining information that reaffirms their own beliefs.

[Hortensis]

8. :) Too true, and most everyone for the latter, actually?

We don't have to gorge on nothing but, tho. Well, probably some do, but many manage to somehow keep their mental arteries unclogged.

[Grasswire2]

6. recognizing these lies/truths adds more to the chaos of this moment.

Alas.

This is why the strategy of "Look forward, not back" may be the worst strategy of all.

Eventually, the crimes and lies of those who've betrayed America in so many ways over the last -- say -- 40 years and which were never adjudicated, never a punishment for anyone involved, explode on us all as the evil people were never made to face justice and the American people are never plainly, clearly, authoritatively told the whole truth.

A little commission here, a little investigation there, but the great lies and the great treacheries and even the treason go not fully acknowledged and ultimately unpunished. The American people are continuously deceived.

Where do the people go to find the truth? Where?

Dick Cheney lives in peace and wealth. George W. lives in peace and wealth.

Heck, look what Oliver North is up to these days:

".... he is having a great time as keynote speaker (‘one of the foremost authorities on international events, American military operations and political affairs!’), updating his blog, writing politico-military thrillers (none of them about making deals with narcos and intervening in Nicaragua, curiously), and serving as one of the directors of the NRA.'"

Never held accountable. Most of the American people will never know what they did.

Look at the matters currently hidden from us! The unredacted Mueller Report, for example.

Senator Blumenthal will stand before a microphone and say "...the American people need to know this shocking information.." And that's the end of his distress. He means what he says. But no one does anything about informing the American people.

LOOK FORWARD NOT BACK is a fool's choice as a governing principle. The bad people know they can continue to commit crimes against the nation with impunity.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Justice oh, sometime in the future, maybe, becomes PERMISSION granted.

We are seeing the fruit of that right now. The republic may not survive.

[ampm]

7. It's all showing up now

It was about selling weapons, they were stockpiling and they had so many they needed a war to make money.